Whether you love tucking in to a tasty takeaway, or creamy curries are a family favourite, Indian food is one of Wales’ most-loved cuisines.

But there’s far more to Indian food than chillies, chutneys and chicken tikka. The creators of restaurant chain FeD in Cardiff, Sachin and Sal Bajpai, bring you 18 fast facts that may surprise you – and a delicious rogan josh recipe.

1. The word “curry” isn’t actually used very often in India. Rather, there is a huge diversity of curry dishes, each with their own regional characteristics.

Red chillies are common in curry

2. Indian food is incredibly diverse, with each of the 28 regions having its own particular ingredients, spices and cooking methods. In the north, the cuisine is less spicy, and commonly features red and green chillies, saffron, ghee (or clarified butter) and yoghurt.

3. Black pepper, tamarind and coconut are widely used in the hotter dishes of the south. Mustard is a common ingredient in eastern cooking, and fish dishes are also more popular here. Western India, meanwhile, is a cosmopolitan region, with a little of everything on offer.

4. Indian food covers six different tastes: sweet, sour, salty, spicy, bitter and sharp. Dishes attempt to balance each of these flavours.

5. Curry is synonymous with Indian food, but most people don’t know what it actually is. It’s a blend of spices called garam masala, and most typically contains tamarind, cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, cardamom and cumin, the amounts of which can differ from dish to dish. A cook’s reputation rests on their ability to add the spices in perfect proportions, to flavour the food without overpowering any other ingredient.

6. Rice is the country’s staple ingredient, and is eaten every single day. Popular types of Indian rice include basmati, ponni, which is often used in breakfast foods, and patna, a long-grain rice similar to basmati.

Chicken Tikka Masala and rice

7. One in seven curries sold in the UK is a chicken tikka masala, making it the UK’s most popular Indian dish. This hugely popular curry features chunks of chicken marinated in spices, with a sweet, rich tomato sauce.

8. However, this much-loved Indian dish is actually from... Scotland. A chef at a curry house in Glasgow claims that he invented the dish in 1971.

9. Naan bread is most often associated with Indian cuisine. However the first Naan bread was made in Persia around 1300 AD. Typically, naans are served hot and brushed with ghee or butter. They can be used to scoop up other foods like an edible spoon, or served stuffed with a filling. Keema naans are stuffed with minced meat, usually lamb, mutton or goat, while peshwari naans are filled with a sweet mixture of nuts and raisins.

10. The largest naan bread ever made was 3.79m long and 1.4m wide, and weighed a whopping 26kg. It was created by a team of firefighters, helped by two local restaurants, in Hampshire in July this year.

11. The biggest curry in the world was made by UK curry chef Abdul Salam in July 2005, and weighed in at 10.3 tonnes.

Poppadoms

12. Another British restaurant holds the record for the world’s tallest stack of poppadoms. It measured 1.57m and contained 1,075 of the crunchy snacks, and was created by Nahim Aslam of Manchester’s Indian Ocean restaurant in March 2011.

13. India is home to one of the hottest chillies in the world, the bhut jolokia. Also known as the “ghost chilli”, it grows in Assam, Nagaland and Manipur, and is more than 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce.

14. Chilli is the most popular spice in the world, and has a number of medical benefits, including helping to combat heart attacks and strokes.

15. Today, India is the largest manufacturer of chili peppers in the world, but chillies aren’t actually native to the country. They were introduced to India by the Portuguese in the 15th Century.

16. The first curry recipe in English appeared in Hannah Glasse’s The Art Of Cookery in 1747

17. The first Indian restaurant is said to have opened in Britain in London in 1809 – there are now more than 9000 Indian restaurants and curry houses across the UK!

18. In fact, there are more Indian restaurants in London than there are in Mumbai.

FeD’s Rogan Josh with Welsh Lamb

Serves 4 people

Ready in 1 hour 20 minutes

Impress dinner party guests or create a showstopping family feast with this delicious curry, full of aromatic spices that give our much-loved Welsh lamb a flavoursome twist. It’s not too hot, but you may want to reduce the amount of chilli powder if cooking for young children.

Ingredients

1kg Welsh lamb shoulder, diced

150ml vegetable oil

5g fennel seeds

10g star anise

25g deggi mirch, or chilli powder if not available

50g ginger, chopped

50g garlic, chopped

4 large onions (about 1kg in weight), sliced

15g cumin

15g ground coriander

10g mace

10g ground cardamom

200g tomato puree

500ml water

10g salt

Method

1. Heat the oil over a medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pan.

2. Add the star anise, cumin, coriander, mace, cardamom and fennel seeds, and cook for a couple of minutes until the seeds start to crackle.

3. Add the ginger, garlic and deggi mirch (or chilli powder) and stir for a few minutes.

4. Add the slice onions and cook until they are brown.

5. Once the onions are cooked add the diced lamb and stir well to coat it in the dried spices.

6. Let the lamb sear for a few minutes until the meat is sealed and the spices are fragrant. Then add the tomato puree, water and salt and cook for another five to ten minutes.

7. Turn the heat down cook for 45 minutes to an hour, until the lamb is tender and cooked all the way through.